The die has been cast in Alexis Tsipras’s inner circle, and the announcement of his new political party has been effectively finalized for late May or, at the latest, early June. The planning changed radically in the early days of last week, and according to To Vima’s sources, the leaks from the government side ahead of the critical meeting of New Democracy’s Parliamentary Group regarding possible early elections in the fall played a decisive role in this shift.
Those leaks reinforced the assessment within the former prime minister’s team that the available political window was shrinking rapidly and that there was no longer any room for prolonged behind-the-scenes preparation.
As a result, the prevailing logic, based on information available up until the day before yesterday, is that if the government moves to catch them off guard, the new political party will need to already have a consolidated political identity, an organizational core, and a public presence. Within this framework, Tsipras decided to accelerate the process, and the final decisions are now considered a matter of time.
According to converging assessments from people closely monitoring the behind-the-scenes activity and who have a clear picture of the discussions within Tsipras’s inner circle, the public announcement of the new venture is expected toward the end of May or in early June, with the political environment pressing for faster action.
A Broader Political Identity
“The venture will not have the characteristics of a narrowly partisan machine of the old SYRIZA type,” a close and regular interlocutor of Tsipras told To Vima, elaborating on what will actually emerge: “The goal is to create a new political entity with a broader identity, one that will attempt to represent the center-left and what is known as the governing Left as a whole.”
Already, the manifesto of the Tsipras Institute, made public on May Day, gave a clear signal: the creation of a formation that will bring together social democracy, the radical left, and political ecology.
Social democracy comes first in the framing, and the foreword also features the term “governing Left” — which, for those in the know, signals an affinity with a left-leaning social democracy inspired by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) as led in recent years by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. The target is clear and explicit: to apply maximum pressure on PASOK, since both parties draw from the same pool of voters, while at the level of political figures, the outreach is being handled carefully rather than through sweeping overtures.
A Strictly Leader-Centered Party
The plan includes outreach to figures outside the current party core, with emphasis on local government officials, academics, technocrats, and people who had distanced themselves from SYRIZA in recent years, and of course careful attention to those within PASOK who are open to cooperation. Tsipras’s central aim is to project an image of political reinvention rather than a return to the old model of operation.
At the same time, it appears a decision has been made that the new formation will operate with a distinctly leader-centered character in its initial phase, in order to avoid any impression of internal division or cacophony. The “first among equals” principle that applied during the SYRIZA years will have no place in new party.
No Negotiation
The strategy under discussion calls for rapid political expansion, with the immediate goal of registering in the polls and creating conditions of political pressure on both SYRIZA and PASOK. On the question of SYRIZA specifically, Tsipras wants no negotiation, discussion, or coordination with the party he once led. As one of his closest advisers told To Vima, “it goes without saying that he is not shaping his path based on what Koumourdourou does or will do.”
In practice, this means that even if a meeting were to take place with SYRIZA president Sokrates Famellos, it would not yield any result, as people inside Koumourdourou expect. “The goal is not to make SYRIZA with a different tax ID number, that makes no sense,” said another figure who supports the former prime minister’s efforts, with a laugh.
Pressure on Famellos
Against this backdrop, the pressure on Famellos to open a direct line of communication with the former prime minister is intensifying by the day. Senior SYRIZA figures believe that the current state of uncertainty is politically weakening the party and creating a climate of fragmentation at the grassroots level.
Figures from the younger generation, such as Kostas Zachariades and Stergios Kalpakis, who hold positions of responsibility, are now openly calling on the SYRIZA president to take initiative and establish direct communication with the Tsipras camp in order to clarify the situation. In reality, a number of Koumourdourou insiders acknowledge that the prospect of Tsipras launching a new party is already creating serious political pressure on SYRIZA. The prevailing view is that if Tsipras does return with a new political formation, there will need to be a shared electoral expression rather than two separate ballots.
“Resign Immediately”
For current sitting members of parliament, the message from Tsipras’s team is unambiguous: anyone who wants to follow him must resign their parliamentary seat immediately and hand it back to SYRIZA. This is a non-negotiable prerequisite for anyone wishing to align with the new formation, with a single exception: the MP for Arta and former minister Olga Gerovassili, who holds an institutional position as Deputy Speaker of Parliament.
On the other hand, senior figures from the New Left and former ministers, including Alexis Charitsis, Efi Achtsioglou, and Nasos Iliopoulos, are reportedly welcome despite past tensions. According to sources, their alignment with the Tsipras party is nearly confirmed. A telling sign was Achtsioglou’s positive public reaction to the Institute’s manifesto, which was well received within the former prime minister’s inner circle. There are also key players on the other side of the equation, such as Pavlos Polakis, who insists that SYRIZA has its own path and must be supported, and Nikos Pappas, who is calling for party bodies to convene in the coming days to assess developments in the new environment.
